Each week, a new first-person recounting of an attempt at being sexy gone hilariously wrong.

There we were, enjoying a bottle of champagne on a suede banquette inside the exclusive Rose Bar area of New York's Gramercy Park Hotel. I kid you not, Sienna Miller herself was seated at the table next to us, dancing languidly to the eardrum-splitting music. It was my boyfriend's 24th birthday and, as a surprise, I had secured us access to this hotbed of cool-kid activity. As we drained the dregs of our umpteenth glasses of bubbly, I presented him with a second gift: a small box containing a key to one of the darkly erotic rooms upstairs. He practically leaped out of his seat with excitement.

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The delights don't stop there, however. Earlier that day, during a pretend trip to the gym, I made a visit to Duane Reade, where I stocked up on all the essentials—chocolates, lube, and as many oversize candles as I could carry. They didn't have my usual Yankees, so I opted for what I believed to be the the next best thing: six off-brand aromatizers with four wicks a piece.

When we arrived at our room, I made a big show of all of the awesome goodies. "Look!" I said teasingly, as I proffered the lighter I had remembered to bring specifically for the occasion. "I came prepared." Soon enough, the room was aglow with the light of two dozen dancing flames. We cued up in the in-house iPod, which came fully loaded with a sex jam playlist (not joking), and proceeded to disrobe and fumble around with the lube. Though I don't particularly remember the sex, I vividly recall what happened next: I awoke around 4 A.M., naked, and covered in hives. My throat felt itchy and claustrophobic. My skin was on fire. I was allergic as sin to what, I realized, weren't candles but rather concentrated home fragrance blow torches from hell—one of which, when burned for an hour, was powerful enough to scent an entire home. I had six of these suckers going, simultaneously, for over four hours, in a space the size of a bathroom. Not to mention that the walls were literally lined with velvet, which made for one of the least porous and aerated chambers in the world entire.

When I woke my boyfriend, the panic in his eyes had less to do with the itchy lacerations all over my body and more with the fact that I wasn't kidding. This wasn't a fire drill. We were getting the hell out of there. Right. Fucking. Now. As in, grab your things, pack up your balls, and march. Years later, when my now-husband and I reflect fondly on the night, his only wisdom is this: "Maybe don't buy your sexy sex candles at Duane Reade?"